What Do We Need to Be Saved From?…

The Pathfinder was so beautiful today, I ran with my hair down and let the wind blow through my hair. I ran by myself today and looked forward to getting new ideas to write and share, as this time on the trail is often when I am inspired.

My dear Jackline Saleiyan JackiewaPads and I spent may hours talking, and dreaming, and she shared about many of the issues the girls and women in her community are currently facing when she came to the U.S. September 2024 to speak at the U.N.

As we then share with people and supporters about the issues her girls are facing in Kenya, I always get a bit worried because here in the U.S. especially as white middle class, we have a natural tendency to look at other cultures and think we are “right” and everyone else is “wrong.” That our “ways” are the “right ways.”

There is a tendency to shake our heads and think “Oh these horrible “people”, how could they do these things.” And this is not good… this is called Unconscious Bias.

As I ran today, I began thinking about the “sins” of OUR cultures.

Every people group and culture has sins or unhealthy customs, values, or ways of life that need to be redeemed or transformed. Every culture.

Here in the U.S. if you were to look around would you be able to identify the “sins” of our culture? The ways that we deviate from what is healthy, natural, or the best most natural ways to live that produce abundant life?

I have had the privilege of being exposed to a few other cultures, with those cultures in view it becomes more and more clear the areas that Western culture could learn from others and areas where we operate in detrimental ways.

One example is, (there are many more) our individualist mindset. My house, my family, my car, my job and my life. You will find I push back against this individualist mindset in lots of my writing because it is not a healthy way to live.

There are other cultures where there is almost no framework for this type of thinking or living. It is the “family house,” mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brothers, sisters, and children, all working together to live and support each other, it is our food, our money, our home, and our life.

There are parts of each of our cultures, that are not good, and not good for us, and we need to be open to what other cultures can teach us.

The message of the Christ exposes, challenges, and identifies the sins and “gods” in every culture and then offers another way or “salvation”. A salvation that heals, liberates, and uplifts.

The Christ stood against the “ways”, laws, and unhealthy norms of the culture. He stood against unhealthy ways of relating to and worshiping God. He pushed back against injustice and lifted those the culture was oppressing because of their status, their gender, or their occupation. He provided a place to belong for those the culture said were unlovable, he provided healing for those the culture said were untouchable.

As I ran today, I thought about the issues all the little girls are facing around the globe, I thought about how vulnerable and fragile this work is as we lean into these issues. We currently have girls who are learning about their infinite worth through The Priceless Project and learning their value, even though their culture has taught them, they are wrong for just being a girl, for just being born.

As we teach girls about their identity and teach them that they are valuable because they are a beautiful masterpiece knit together in their mother’s womb, imparted with purpose and possess gifts to give to their community and world, it is so delicate because as we expose the “sins” in culture it becomes very very easy to create a victim and villain mentality between women and men, and this will get us NOWHERE.

As I focus my life and attention on uplifting and ministering to the hearts of women and girls, I am keenly aware that I NEED MEN. All this work will fail if we villainize men and platform women.

What we NEED is for our Men and Women to rise up together. “All for one and one for ALL.” We need men, secure men, who can look at the sins of their own cultures and say “no”, we are going to create and provide a different way for our girls and women to live life.

I find it interesting that The Christ came and inhabited a woman’s womb, and to top that the crux of the story is that the woman became pregnant without the “seed” of a man. Why didn’t Gabriel come to Joseph and say,

“Joseph, don’t be afraid for you have found favor with God! You will give a seed to a woman and this woman will give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David.”

Why not come through the seed of man? Why come through a virgin womb?

God divine in a helpless, young, scared, powerless, culturally oppressed girl. Unrestrained power and might, inside the most insignificant piece of society, inside the most vulnerable part of her body. Oh, the paradox of a uterus holding all authority on heaven and earth and under the earth.

Why use a woman, why not use a man? Why not a seed instead of a womb?

Every piece of the Story of the Messiah turns cultural ways upside down, shines a light on the dark places of humanity, and demands a new way. His followers called it “The Way.”

A prostitute will be one of Jesus’s great grandmothers, a son will rebel and break his father’s heart but still find he belongs and is welcome home, a cheating political figure will be invited to dine at the banqueting table, a thief will be invited to experience paradise, a woman will have a man stand up for her and send her prosecutors away, a girl plagued mentally and thrown out of her community will be healed and restored, the untouchable will be touched, the unhealable will be healed, the unforgivable will be forgiven.

Why do we need this Messiah? Why do we need to be saved? From what do we need to be saved?

We need to be saved from 10-year-old girls being married off to men, being impregnated and their uterus bursting because their tiny bodies are not ready for this.

We need to bring salvation to women in the form of jobs or protection to provide for their basic needs like sanitary towels/pads so when they are bleeding for a week each month for the rest of their LIFE, they can operate in the world.

We need to bring salvation to women so they have options to be educated or the option to cultivate all that has been placed inside them. As they offer their gifts to the world, we will ALL benefit.

We need to bring salvation to our governments so women have rights to own land and for the government that was put in place to help protect human rights, not ask her for bribes or “personal favors” in order to protect her.

I need some MEN and WOMEN to rise up and say we need a Savior, we Need Messiah the Christ, the Spirit of the Christ to turn our culture upside down and do what he came to do, save us from ourselves.

My dears, every single one of us is here on this earth, living and breathing because of the uterus of a woman. Even the one many of us worship and call God came to us in a uterus. I pray that the power of this image awakens us and may we all do everything in our power to give this miraculous incredible home from which we all have come the reverence it deserves.

She is the creator, the incubator of life. Her body a temple, her mind a universe, her heart an ocean, if we together will provide her the protection and wings she deserves, she will fly. When women fly we elevate everything around us, with her we will all rise.

From my Heart to Yours, as I walk out my calling pushing up against the ways of our culture that must change for the whole of humanity, our co-existence depends on it.